Chapter 38 | Mage Robes

The trek back to the dilapidated shack was a short and silent one. The last few days had passed in a pseudo-trance where he spent most of his time either checking his spells out or fighting Satou until he literally collapsed. The Assassin would have to carry him back to their personal little homeless shelter when that happened.

Being a nouveau riche young man with five hundred whole gold pieces to his name, Theo had offered to renovate the shack by paying some carpenters and architects from a nearby small town. Of which Satou had surprisingly accepted without thinking. Apparently, he himself had been considering doing so, but didn’t have the money.

What the hell is he spending his money on then? Isn’t he like a super mega assassin? I thought he would have a lot of money.

The construction team would be coming over in a couple of days to build the house. With that, Satou would have an actual roof over his head, and Theo would have a place to rest when he was travelling these parts of Renovael.

He didn’t plan to stay here for the rest of his life, after all. If he were going to become the Supreme Main Character, he would travel all over the place. In fact, a hunch told him that he wouldn’t stay terrestrial for the rest of his life. All that talk about the 4th and 3rd-rate world from the system, Long Tian’s existence, it all hinted at a cosmos rich with life.

For now though, he was happy with what he had. He settled onto his makeshift floor-bed cross-legged and looked out the “window”. Which was actually just a hole in the wall. It was the deep night, probably something like 2 a.m if he had to guess. He could sleep until noon, as he didn’t have much to do tomorrow other than waiting for the ID, so he decided to take one last look at his mind palace.

To accommodate his new spells using the same singular fire gem, he had to be creative. First, he had deleted all the spells at hand and started fresh.

From there, he had decided to utilize the empty spaces inside the palace. So far, he had only used the outer walls of the structure, but the inside was completely empty.

And his idea was a simple but effective one. He had propped up a sort of pedestal made out of bricks in the middle of the room and inserted the fire gem on top of it. Then he had sealed it off with more walls and opened little holes in the aforementioned walls.

When he willed it to, with excruciating effort, he had managed to turn those simple brick mana constructs into crude pipes. After fusing those pipes into the enclosed fire mana chamber, he could feed several spells from inside the mind palace without having to constantly switch the gem around. Or change the spell on the go.

Then, he had allocated the empty walls of that fire mana building specifically for spells that utilized fire mana.

This would probably be the framework for his element-based spells. He could see himself getting other gems with different attunements, creating more rooms, some with a combination of elements. All in all, it seemed like he would have to contemplate his… Factory management quite a bit.

Putting that aside, his new spells had done the job well.

The fireball was the same as before, with the only change being the fire stone’s moving into the inner chamber.

Then there was Crackle Shot, the spell that overheated the dirt he was holding onto. In the future, on the off-chance that he got his hands on an Earth-attribute gem, he would probably be able to use this spell without outside aid. But he had to physically bend down and pick up a handful to use it now, which was fine most of the time.

Sure, it wouldn’t exactly work in a place like the tower, but he was going to be fighting mostly in forest terrain for the duration of the Bandittide. After the major quest was over, he would probably overhaul his spells once again.

The way the spell worked was simple. If he were holding a bunch of dirt, the spell would overheat those particles. When he threw it, it would stick to the enemy and burn through their clothes. On the chance that it hit their exposed skin, it would dig into it and cause severe burns.

Although it wasn’t exactly a lethal spell, it was definitely effective in slowing down or simply hurting people. Even Satou had praised it for being a smart way to utilize his skills.

Its best advantage other than that was its minuscule mana cost. He could practically spam it without stopping, and he would just naturally regenerate enough mana to keep it going infinitely. The main hurdle wouldn’t be his mana, in fact, but his ability to keep throwing dirt around.

Next was the flash water evaporation spell. It would take the water and heat it up suddenly, causing a forward burst of steam. If the opponent were someone like a third-rate warrior, they wouldn’t be able to defend against it. They would both get pushed away by the force, and get terrifying burns from the spell itself.

It actually didn’t strictly need water to use. It could do the same thing by pulling on the surrounding air and heating it up instead, but this would cost much more mana and would be less effective. Carrying around a flaskful of water would let him cast this spell a couple of times, which was more than enough.

His next spell was the flamethrower spell he had devised. It would start a constant outward stream of fire.

To make this more effective, Theo had devised a switch mechanism that could help him shift the mana core for a double cast of the spell, which he had used in the last mock battle against Satou.

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And then there was the Earthen Spike he had developed, which was actually the same Earthen Wall spell he had created recently. He had just made some adjustments.

Apparently, even though he couldn’t control his mana after it left his body in real time, he could pre-program it to act a certain way once outside. He had actually been doing this since the time he had started casting spells, but hadn’t really wrapped his head around it as a concept until now.

So, adding an empty size and shape adjustment inscription to the spell formula let him change it before casting. That was how he had aimed for Satou’s family jewels.

With the addition of these spells into his arsenal, Theo could now fight pretty well, if not a bit viciously. His attacks weren’t the flashy type, sure, but they definitely weren’t sneaky. Most radiated a lot of light, and they weren’t the insta-kill type attacks.

I wonder how it will be…

Theo didn’t forget Satou’s words. He knew he would be taking the life of another in the future. And according to his words, there wasn’t even a way to prepare himself. On Earth, Theo had always gravitated towards ruthless main characters. Those who could kill without batting an eye when needed.

He had made fun of those protagonists who would have a hard time doing so, he would curse at those who spared the evil.

But now, when he was in the spotlight… He wasn’t as sure.

As Satou said, however, there was no way to know if he really could, before actually doing it.

With a sigh, Theo lay down on his bed and went to sleep.

“‘ese are your ‘obes,” the beaver-person spoke, whose name was apparently ‘Ason. Like Jason, but sticking the J down your throat and choking on it.

Theo took the gray robes from his hand and looked them up and down. It was made with a comfortable fabric Theo didn’t know of. It had four pockets, two on the liner, two inside his sleeves.